It is one of the most magnificent memorials in Washington
D.C. It is a monument to Grant and all the soldiers who fought in the Civil War.
The section I decided to sketch features soldiers moving a cannon into
position.
This monument was first proposed by the Society of the Army
of Tennessee who wanted to honor the general who led the Union Army to victory.
It was created by sculptor Henry Mervin Shardy who spent 20 years of his life
working on it. When
Shardy and architect Edward Pearce Casey won the commission to design the memorial
in 1902, they had no idea the scope of what they were getting involved in. The
budget for the memorial was $250,000.
The artist researched the project with ambition. He joined
the National Guard and spent four years learning military practice. He found
and researched Union equipment and gear and he read countless books and studied paintings
about the Civil War to familiarize himself with Grant and his military tactics.
He was criticized several times for the slow pace of his work. The amazing
amount of detail however proves that it was time well spent. He used his own
likeness in one of the soldiers in the charge, forever memorializing his own
likeness.
He worked at a frantic pace at the end of the project
suffering through many sleepless nights, and illness. Sadly, the artist died
two weeks before the sculpture was publicly unveiled on April 27, 1922 one
hundred years after Grant’s birth.
It was freezing cold the day I did this sketch and I ended
up sitting in a puddle of ice cold water on the granite bench I sat on, literally freezing my butt. It was a minor inconvenience
compared to Shardy’s long suffering commitment to this work of art.